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The Future This Week, April 2, 2017: Robot Job Apocalypse?

“The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.”–Erich Fromm

You’re fired!

Today’s lead story brings to mind a classic gag from Woody Allen’s early stand-up comic days. He told the story of how his father came home from work one day to report that he had been laid off from his factory job; he was replaced by a 50-dollar part on the assembly line. The sad thing was, his mother immediately ran out and bought one of those parts.

The notion that a manufacturing plant could be comprised of 3D printers run and maintained by robots is mind boggling. So who maintains the maintenance robots? Maintenance maintenance robots? And who maintains the maintenance maintenance robots….?

Space/NASA–NASA astronauts made a big booboo when they lost an important part of the International Space Station during a spacewalk earlier this week. One of four pieces of cloth shielding designed to protect the station from impacts by small bits of orbiting space junk, broke free and floated away. The astronauts were able to make the other three pieces make do. That’s a good thing. For all we know, the interplanetary lost and found could be on Miranda.

Next Big Future reports that there is a push within the Chinese government to triple spending on space science over the next several years. It’s still far less than NASA spends, though. Projections through the year 2030 are provided.

Biotech/Anti-Aging–PureTech Health has licensed a possible anti-aging compound from NovartisMIT Technology Review reported that Boston-based startup company . The drug, everolimus has been shown in clinical trials to increase effectiveness of flu vaccines in elderly patients, suggesting that it effectively makes immune systems younger. The substance is related to rapamycin, which has previously been shown to increase average life span in mice by as much as 25%.

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